56 J , iL ("("TIle 011ly tlliJlg illat 171akes this riding cllib wortll wllilr is g'elti11g Ilonze lo llie B1iffalo Eve1zi11g' Neu!s, lvitll its Corti1Jleie coverage of all sports * by' tIle l1{lti01Z'S best SpoTts 'lv1"iters." .,..,:.,.\('..Stot.e,....dø. ..'1 .:. .... .l....ô,'oltpQ.P..... (A dvprtispmpnt) and he felt he owed It to us. Besides, there was little water to spare from washing and cooking, and the field-ra- . "" ff tIon, or compo, tea was poor stu . He loaded two vast, empty demijohns into the back seat of a jeep. These ves- sels were laced stoutly in straw and each accommodated sixty litres. I drove the jeep into town, because the deal was one which had to be made through Ameri- can channels, in an American beach- head area. Negotiations were concluded for twenty-four-hundred lire, or twen- ty-four dollars, cash down. I tipped the loaders three Chelsea, or front-line, cigarettes apiece and drove back with a high heart. Ten y:trds from home I hit a sharp ditch in the yard, which caused the starboard demijohn to disintegrate with a noise like the crack of a rifle. The floor of the jeep was immediately four inches deep in wine, and the tip- ple of the country shot through gaps in the sides like a cataract. The other cor- respondents and the enlisted men came out of our farmhouse and stood around in a circle, taking a lively interest in the plight of four fat, white ,earthworms beside the car, who stiffened, after stub- born resistance, and passed out. Captain Mason also appeared, and I cast an un- easy glance at him. The Captain looked things over silently. The wine supply was close to his heart, but there was something about my position, apparently, which put him in mind of Harry the Horse or Nicely Nicely, if not both, for he scratched his chin and burst out laugh- ing. "This is one of the droll episodes of the war," he announced. He then super- vised the unloading of the relnaining demi john, taking care to see that I kept some distance away from the operation. O N nights when the shells fell close around us and rocked the house like a cradle, and German infantry movements brought the enemy eight minutes away from us by car instead of ten, the Captain took his rifle to bed with him on the stone terrace out- doors and lay awake till dawn keeping guard over us. No paratroopers landed, but it was a ghostly time and reminded me of our first two days on the beach- head. The haunted properties of a beach- head can work two ways if the landing force takes the enemy by surprise. I'm sure we took the enemy by surprise, though an Italian nobleman in the area told us later that he considered the ab- sence of German forces on the Anzin beaches on D Day to be a deliberate ruse and stratagem. It sounds over- subtle. At any rate, the enemy had only